mr2mk1g

Dog: "2, 3, 4, 5 - amalgam filler, 6..."

brilliant idea - she's always chastising my father that I'm always going to see plays and shakespeare and the like but that he never takes her. The importance of being earnest starts at the end of the month - I'll take her to that if I can't come up with anything else before I go over. cheers

fantastic post!

119lb and really tall would mean it ought to be really easy for you to get off the grate. so basically yeah you sucked. the great thing about that is that it was simply your skills that sucked as opposed to your body shape. Now that's hardly surprising given it was your first go - so don't give up, just have another go. We all sucked when we first started. Remember: you sucked NOT your body. You can change your skills with a little practice, you can't change your body so easily. The fact that you sucked is good. It means there's no reason you shouldn't skydive based on your body shape... it simply means that just like the rest of us you didn't perform like a gold medalist at your first go.

I'm stuck. Gotta go over their place some time on saturday so any ideas would be great.

Gurkhas! One of our most feared regiments.

Antipodeans certainly. Not only do we share common blood and language, but also an attitude. There’s just a certain element of – “sod it lets go down the pub” that I’m not so sure you get elsewhere. A kind of social ambivalence or apathy towards being bothered much about anything at times other than the comparative merits of two kinds of beer or what we’re next going to chuck on the barbi. With the yanks it's mostly a common language, a good bit of common blood and much of a common attitude, but it's certainly not as strong a similarity as with our Oz and NZ cousins. They’re just too easily excitable. With the Europeans... well... sometimes we're here in geographical terms only. Others... well we can be very good neighbors sometimes... but there are just those times when each side can relish doing some drilling at 11pm, even if we are always happy to share a cup of sugar. Of the three they've gotta be last on the list…. although I think third out of the whole world is still to be considered as close to our hearts. er... can this answer also count towards your other poll... I'd cross post but can't be arsed. My comments would be identical if I could be bothered

Yup - question was asked of the UK and answered from a UK perspective. I specifically bowed out of the conversation re US self defence as I don't have any detailed knowledge of the law. I agree. No one really suggests wounding shots, it's just there can be differences in the legal side of things depending on whether you kill someone or simply wound them. That's the only issue I was addressing. It's exactly the same here. Maybe at least... here we might even be justified in just shooting without a warning. We have no duty to retreat or to warn nor even to wait until they strike first... we are simply to use "reasonable" force. That is heavily dependant on the exact situation... but a burglar at night in your house is all but open season. The point is he wasn't justified in using deadly force as he was only defending property and not anyone’s life. I believe the situation involved him stood on the roof of his stoor and the rioters below. I think he confessed he never had any fear that he would be injured (hell I would have done but whatever). Since he was only defending property and not life, the defence of self defence would not have been open to him had he killed anyone. As he only injured people, the defence was open to him, so he got off. Therein lies a difference between our legal systems. Here there is only reasonable and unreasonable force. If the jury thinks that under all of the circumstances your actions were reasonable; fine. If not, then that defence may not work. Personally I can't think of anything more sublimely simple. If a jury of your peers consider your actions to have been unreasonable under all of the circumstances, how can that not be worthy of punishment? As I highlighted though, the only caveat comes with the defence of property alone - it's been decided that property is not worth taking a life over, thus killing will always be unreasonable force.... apparently setting fire to someone though might not be (so long as you don’t kill them of course). Although there is another test case in which a home owner woke to find someone burgling their house. They went downstairs, found the burglar, beat the guy unconscious (up to this point their actions are probably fine). The home owner then dragged them into the back garden and stopped to dig a pit. Setting the would-be-burglar in the pit, they then set fire to them and they burnt to death. Ok, said the jury... self defence is one thing but that's just a bit on the harsh side. Off to jail he went, no passing GO, no collecting £200. So kids... be careful with matches.

Shooting someone doesn't necessarily equate to lethal force – eg most GSW victims survive. Thus it is quite possible for me to be quite within my rights to shoot someone in the leg to prevent them stealing my stuff (under the right circumstances), but may never kill someone simply because they want to walk off with my TV. This all falls under our self defence legislation - ie I have a right to use reasonable force to defend my property. I also have the right to kill in defence of my life (or simply serious assault) or indeed the life of another, (even a stranger). There is however a statutory bar on anyone using deadly force to defend property alone. This country has simply decided that while killing in defence of life or limb may be perfectly justified in certain circumstances, it is never justified simply to save material things. I was under the impression at least some states had similar provisions over there? Thus a non lethal shooting or mere threatening with a firearm may be legal, while in the exact same situation a killing might not. I perhaps used a poor example as it introduced this baring element to confuse matters. As for threats, how about "get outa the car or I'll shoot you in the leg". Of course if he bleeds out I'll be in trouble... unless I felt threatened by him. There's even been a test case where a shop owner was found to have been perfectly justified in chucking fire bombs at rioters who were trying to ransack his shop... sure that could have killed and if it had he'd have been in jail... but as it only horibly burnt some of them he was ok to do it.

I highly doubt it too. Not my home DZ, not overly enamored by the stories I hear of their rigging in general. Still not my place though to drop anyone in the proverbial though. Sure I'd own a system with a skyhook. It’s a sweet piece of kit for which I have nothing but respect.

I've seen them retrofitted to club gear. Think they were chute shop rigs. But I'm guessing that in the spirit of the question they ought to be outa the fatory right. Does not Jump Shack claim their two riser rsl acts as/negates the need for, a colins lanyard? (however debatable). Other than that I'm guessing there aren't any other than RWS rigs... hence the question. I never said RWS didn't have some great pieces of kit.

Sure, if he can show he was assulted then he ought not have a problem with the detention... so long as he says it's detention and not still self defence. I'm not going to comment further on self defence in the states as its outa my detailed knowledge. I'll just say that I'm surprised by all the people who end up convicted of shooting someone after they've retreated if self defense only requires a threat immediately before the act as opposed to during the act.

Does he really need to justify deadly force? Here simply pulling a gun does not require the same degree of threat as killing. Eg I can threaten with a gun to defend property but there are no circumstances that I can kill to defend property alone. The reason why he was at the truck stop only counts as to the credability of what he says. It does not make what he did either legal or illegal - just changes whether or not the jury believe that he was genuinly acting out of self defense or simply out there acting as a vigilante. Even vigilante's are allowed to act in self defense... but one who lied about why he's there might not be belived about how scared he was.

Isn't the "G" for "Grievous" over there too? You guys have got odd charges over there. If anything I’d have had him charged with unlawful imprisonment for detaining them illegally rather than for drawing on them. Is it not the case that in order to rely on self defence, you have to reasonably believe you are threatened at the time that you acted, rather than some time immediately before?

You buy one - tell me how the transaction goes. Then I'll buy 10. If it seems too good to be true it usually is.

My point is though: is his belief that he's in danger still reasonable once the 6 men turn arround and walk off to their car? Maybe it is. Maybe he thought they were off for a gun? Maybe the jury will conclude that once the turn arround to fuck off he was no longer defending himself. I certainly think there's a risk there... I wouldn't want to put my name to a not guilty prediction on those grounds alone.

sigma tandem? is it an option on the vector sport rig?

I suspect the best defense may be that he was arresting them for his earlier assault (presumably their threatening behavior amounts to assault there?). Couched in those terms such action ought to be perfectly legal here. (so ok, replace pistol with rifle) I think he's got difficulties in claiming continued self defense once he follows them back to their car. All he needed to do to defend himself was not go after them.

Thats the kind of rebuttal I was hoping for earlier. You consider the risk that the skyhook will be disconnected (or will disconnect - eg Mr. Booth's comment on shackle being the week link in the system) to be greater than the risk that the reserve will be choked off by the malfunctioning main. Now that's a considered conclusion that I can perfectly respect, even if it does differ from the one given by egons. I certainly hold it above those who have simply said – don’t modify your drills based on the existence of safety equipment. I wonder if anyone was ever chastised for suggesting maybe the best thing would be for them to cutaway before deploying their reserve because they had this new fangled three ring circus thingamajig? >>>

Sounds like you've got a bit mixed up about how an RSL/skyhook works. Neither cut away for you - you do that using the normal procedure. Once you cutaway the RSL deplys the reserve. This is essentially the same for the skyhook. What you're reading about things happening on both risers is the Collins lanyard - this is something the skyhook happens to come with but you may also find on rigs without the skyhook.

Do you guys not have a right to arrest someone in the commission of a criminal act? Does that power of arrest extend to illegal immigration? Problem with claiming self defense is that they immigrants retreated and were leaving in their vehicle. He followed, this any self defense arguably ends there. But does he have a right to arrest someone for illegal immigration? If that right exists that could be what he ought to argue.

Egons considers cutting away from a damaged canopy at 500ft to be a less dangerous choice with a skyhook than deploying his reserve into it. He knows the skyhook inside out. He considers dumping his reserve into the mess to be the "more dangerous choice" (for him at least). The other situations I agree entirely about increasing risks because of a techno toy. This is the only situation where I feel the "toy" may actually afford a mitigation of an existing risk where drills are changed to allow it to do so.

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1198561#1198561 here's my answer to the same question 6 months ago

As a young teenager my parents replaced the contents of a bottle of MY Scotch with tea. Nothing was ever said. We just each knew the other knew that the other knew.

dude, did we even watch the same program? The program concluded that she wasn't doing anything like 120 after going through a series of scientific tests to determine why she wasn't doing standard skydiver terminal. That's a perfectly valid way of doing an experiment - you start with a known value and work away from it though testing. Thus the program started with the premis that in FF a human is generally going at 120mph but after testing they concluded that she was going more like 40mph. Sure they took a whole damn hour to get to the point - a point we would have got to in less than 5 mins, but they were talking to the 60 million whuffos out there not the couple of dozen thousand skydivers who could have watched.